


He Shatters (But His Hands Heal)

by psykou



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (more specifically), Amnesia, Angry Schlatt, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Canonical Character Death, Developing Friendships, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Gen, Ghost Schlatt, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Ghostbur, Hopeful Ending, Includes References To:, Light Angst, Panic Attacks, Platonic Bed-sharing, Platonic Relationships, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Russian Literature, SMPLive - Freeform, SMPLive Reunion, Sad wilbur, Schlatt & Wilbur Centric, Swearing, The Bible - Freeform, the book of job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27785548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psykou/pseuds/psykou
Summary: It takes Schlatt a little longer to come back as a ghost, but when he does, Wilbur is there waiting.-“They told me I wasn’t as bad as you,” Wilbur says, “but I don’t know what happened, so I just took their word for it.” He cocks his head like a dog. “Do you remember us, Schlatt? Do you remember what we did?”
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Jschlatt, Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Jschlatt & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, jschlatt & phil watson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 488





	He Shatters (But His Hands Heal)

**Author's Note:**

> i don't think we'll be seeing ghost!schlatt in dream smp canon, but here's my take on what might happen if we did.
> 
> this is my first fic for the smp! i do have plans for more, but my motivation is incredibly sporadic and thus i make no promises.
> 
> obligatory note: the characters displayed in this fanfiction are based solely on the online personas of real people. to my current understanding, the content presented here is within the comfort zone of all those involved. if this is or comes to be incorrect, please let me know and i will amend the work accordingly.
> 
> enjoy <3

When Schlatt comes back as a ghost, the first thing he sees is a dark room.

Someone built this, he can tell. All blackstone, magma, red bricks and iron bars. It reminds Schlatt of what humans think hell looks like—the kind of amateurish, simple hell they see in their darkest nightmares, the ones with flashes of black and blood and screaming and fear.

Once, Schlatt might have found it unsettling if not plain ominous. Now, having been a resident for some time, he feels qualified to say it doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing.

“Oh. You came back.”

Schlatt turns around to see Wilbur Soot standing behind him. Except— not Wilbur, because his skin is as gray as his surname, wispy and transparent around the edges. His hair and eyes, too. The only colorful thing about him is his sweater, bright and yellow as the sun. How ironic.

“They said you weren’t coming back,” Wilbur says, and stuffs his gray hands in his gray pockets. His feet barely brush the ground. “I don’t remember much about you, but it sounds like you’re an ambitious guy. So if I came back, surely you could too. If you wanted to.”

Schlatt stares at him. Openly.

“You’re dead,” he says.

“Yep,” he pops the ‘p’.

“And... I’m dead. With you.”

Wilbur walks closer. Floats closer. “Seems like it, yeah. I don’t know how they’ll all react to you, though. I think they hate you.”

Schlatt spits out a laugh. “Do they now?”

“Sounds like you did a lot of bad things,” Wilbur says. His eyes drift over Schlatt’s shoulder, and when he turns to follow the ghost’s gaze, there’s a painting on the wall behind them. A portrait of President Schlatt in his black suit and red tie. His eyes are white and his smile is cruel.

If the room is hell, Schlatt is the devil.

“They told me I wasn’t as bad as you,” Wilbur says, “but I don’t know what happened, so I just took their word for it.” He cocks his head like a dog. “Do you remember us, Schlatt? Do you remember what we did?”

Does he?

_(—A thick line of soldiers in shimmering black armor. A van full of his allies and enemies. A fox, a boy, a vice president, screaming. A crossbow. Wilbur, in the back, unprotected, hair falling over his eyes. A hollow smile on a white mask. A van full of his enemies. The smell of alcohol and gunpowder and burning toast. A crossbow, loaded. “Put it between his eyes—”)_

“I remember most of it,” he says. “The end is a little blurry, you know, when I died, and there’s some pieces missing from the old days. But the recent stuff is all clear. The election, the festival, all the wars and shit...”

He looks away from the portrait. Something about it makes him uneasy.

“I don’t know what came after I died, obviously, so if you don’t know, don’t bother asking.”

Wilbur seems... Not jealous. Curious, more than anything, but inscrutable beyond that. Maybe a hint of grief in his gray eyes, and then confusion, like he doesn’t know what he’s grieving.

“They said I made a lot of mistakes,” Wilbur tells him as they walk away. “A lot to apologize for. I guess I have unfinished business here.”

Schlatt studies Wilbur’s gray face, his gray eyes, and then his own gray hands.

“I guess I do too,” he says.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Wilbur has decided to set up his ghostly residence in the sewers.

Which is to say, when Schlatt doesn’t know where to go when the sun sets and monsters start groaning in the shadows, Wilbur takes his gray hand and leads him down a ladder into a small room. It’s cozy. Schlatt doesn’t usually do cozy, but he’s low on options right now.

“You can stay with me,” Wilbur says, “as long as you need. I feel like we were friends once, so I’ll treat you like a friend.” He pauses above the crafting table. “Would you say we were friends, Schlatt?”

Schlatt thinks back to tidal waves and tiny farms and cryptocurrency scams and laughter. “I’d say so, yeah.”

“Cool.” Wilbur sets down a second bed, next to his own. “I don’t sleep—I don’t need to, ghosts don’t need to—but it’s nice to lay down somewhere soft when you have nothing else to do. So now you can too.” He smiles, and it seems genuine.

“Thanks,” Schlatt says, and follows Wilbur into the next room.

It’s like a little underground library. There are bookshelves carved into the cobblestone, two chairs, and a crackling log fire in the corner. The smoke rises up through a hole in the ceiling and the fire dances, filling the room with warm light and making their shadows flicker.

Wilbur takes a book off the lectern and the pen next to it, and drops into one of the chairs.

“Feel free to browse, or do anything,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

Schlatt takes his time, runs his fingertips along the bindings and skims the titles. Lots of history, geography, travel books. A handful of fiction novels, a brief patch of poetry. Political commentaries and philosophical dialogues interspersed within. One finally catches his eye and he slides it out.

“ _Heart of a Dog_ ,” he says, turning to Wilbur. “Russian. Have you read it?”

Wilbur glances up from his own book—the pages of which, Schlatt notes, are blank. “I don’t think so. Someone recommended it to me once. I don’t... I don’t remember who.” His eyes go fuzzy for a moment, like white static, then clear again. “Why, have you read it before?”

“The name is familiar,” he says, tracing the words on the cover. “I’m not sure.”

“Well,” Wilbur gestures to the chair across from him and smiles. “Go on and find out.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Tommy, predictably, does not react well to Schlatt’s reappearance.

“What the fuck,” he says. And then again, for emphasis: “Wilbur, what the _fuck_.”

Wilbur doesn’t seem to pick up on the sheer panic Schlatt’s presence brings. Or he just doesn’t care, which seems to be entirely within his spectral capacity. “He came back a few days ago. He’s been staying with me so far, but he doesn’t have to.”

Tommy doesn’t deign to respond to Wilbur, turning to Schlatt instead. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here.” He does nothing to hide the venom in his voice, which, okay, Schlatt can understand. If he was alive, there would probably already be a sword in his stomach.

He doesn’t feel like shooting back with the same heat, but he can feel it building. He’s too out of his comfort zone right now with all this weird ghost shit. “I don’t know, Tommy, I’m just here. I’m not like Wilbur, though—I know what I did. I know _exactly_ who I was.”

Tommy’s scowl deepens, but his grip tightens on the crossbow. “Well, if you can’t go back to hell, just stay away from us. No one wants you here.”

“I know,” he says. At Tommy’s wary expression, he narrows his eyes. “I’m not looking for pity, Tommy, God. I’m just accepting the facts of the situation here.” Schlatt pockets his hands, channels the businessman who once took the stage and changed a nation. “And the facts are obvious. You hate what I said, and you hate what I did, and you probably danced on my grave.”

He sees Tommy flinch, just a little, and a snarl creeps onto his face. Fuck the comfort zone. It’s just too easy.

“At least I have a grave, though. You say you hated me, and you still held a funeral! Even if you pissed on my name, at least you did _something_. You couldn’t even give Wilbur that much.”

He laughs, and it comes out harsher than he means for it to. Huh. He’s genuinely annoyed about this whole thing. Wait, scratch that, he’s _angry_. He’s angry because maybe they were shit presidents, and maybe they hurt people, but he always respected Wilbur as a political rival if not an old friend. It’s an insult to his legacy.

“Jesus Christ! No wonder he has unfinished business. You practically brought him back yourself! What, did you just leave his body to rot somewhere? I mean, I knew you had issues, but holy shit, Tommy.” He gestures to Wilbur, watching quietly from the sidelines. “Wasn’t he supposed to be your general? Your president? Your _brother_?”

He takes a hard step forward, and Tommy stumbles back to keep the distance.

“You treated me better when you thought I was burning in hell, Tommy Innit. What does that say about you?”

Tommy looks at him. His face is contorted with rage and guilt and grief. He looks at Wilbur. Wilbur doesn’t look back, instead favoring the view of L’Manburg’s newest houses and buildings.

Eventually, he turns and leaves, wiping his eyes with his back turned.

Schlatt wonders how accurate his funeral portrait is.

Wilbur says nothing.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


“Have you ever read the Bible, Wilbur?”

The ghost’s head darts up from his book. It’s the blank one again, and yet he spends hours with it, twirling the pen between his long fingers. Sometimes he swaps it for a special book in his chest, his personal collection, but most nights he reads the empty pages.

“I’m not sure. I guess if I did, it wasn’t memorable,” he confesses. “Organized religion is a little weird to think about after you’ve literally been to hell and back. Twice.”

“Right, right,” Schlatt says, flipping his page in _Heart of a Dog_.

He looks up again when he can feel Wilbur’s wry smile on his gray skin. “Passage on your mind?”

Schlatt snorts. “Yeah, kinda. There’s this one book—the Book of Job. I used to read it a lot.”

Wilbur sits up, propping up his elbows and resting his chin on his hands. “Give me the abridged version then, if you will. Don’t get preachy with it.”

“It’s a lot to unpack,” he teases. “Thought-provoking, deep stuff. You sure you wanna get into it?”

“We’ve got plenty of time.”

Schlatt smiles and sets his book aside. “Alright, Wilbur. You asked for it.” He clears his throat for dramatic effect, and Wilbur laughs softly behind his hand.

“Okay. So, Job is the quintessential biblical good guy. Helps people, loves his family, praises the Lord Almighty, the works. Satan decides to have a little chat up on high about this guy.”

“That never bodes well,” Wilbur comments.

“No, probably not. Satan claims Job is only good because he’s been blessed, and that if he could torture him a little, surely Job would renounce his faith and everything. So God says, you know, ‘go ahead’, and the devil kills all his animals and his kids and gives him skin sores and shit.”

“‘No good deed goes unpunished’,” Wilbur quotes, and Schlatt grins.

“Exactly. Some of Job’s buddies come over while he’s sick and mourning and start to discuss, you know, what the hell happened to his life? Their consensus ends up being that Job deserves it— that he must have sinned somewhere along the line, and this is his punishment. Basically, that he brought it upon himself. The kids too.”

Wilbur frowns. “You said these were his friends?”

“Yeah, well, Job gets pissed. Says they’re all a worthless bunch of bastards and that he’s totally innocent in all of this. His friends get offended, saying it’s gotta be his fault. Job continues to disagree, and he gets to thinking: how does God judge us if he can change our behavior at any time? And, side note, why do good people suffer while bad people succeed?”

Something stiffens in Wilbur’s face. “That’s a very... polarizing way to view people.”

He shrugs. “Well, that’s how it goes in the Bible. You commit a sin, you’re damned, you pray, and if you pray enough and do enough good shit, then maybe you’re forgiven. Original sin says we’re all fucked from birth, and that we’re supposed to spend our whole lives trying to make up for it.”

“I guess we ran out of time.”

“I guess so.” He picks up where he left off: “Anyway, the friends keep saying Job is evil until God himself intervenes, kinda flexes on them a bit. Job submits to his all-knowing power, and God fixes him up with new animals and new kids, having won his little bet with Satan, and heads back up to heaven.“

“And?”

“And that’s it. Life goes on, for another hundred and forty years.”

Wilbur’s nose scrunches up. “That’s how it ends?”

Schlatt nods and leans forward, clasping his hands together. “Forget the story. Focus on the meaning. The part of it I keep going back to, Wilbur, is the punishment. Do we deserve what we get, in the end?”

He looks Wilbur dead in the eyes, full focus. “Did _we_ deserve what _we_ got? How are we ever supposed to know? We both went to hell, me once and you twice, and we came back out. That’s not supposed to happen. We’re not supposed to be here.”

Schlatt laughs, and there’s a manic edge to it. “We’re _ghosts_. What happens now? Where do we go? Why are we here to begin with?”

Wilbur breaks his gaze with a heavy sigh and leans back in his seat. His eyes fix on the cobblestone grooves in the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

Schlatt’s lips curl back. Anger comes to him quickly, now, even quicker than when he was alive.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course you don’t know,” Schlatt growls. “That’s all you ever fucking say.”

“It’s not like divine judgement is just another thing missing from my memory, Schlatt. Nobody knows the answers to those questions. It comes down to belief at some point.”

“Oh yeah?” Schlatt stares him down, even though he’s not staring back. It’s about pressure—about strength, force, the upper hand. “What do you believe in, Wilbur?”

Wilbur doesn’t answer him.

Schlatt scoffs. “Well, then, you’re no help at all.”

Wilbur traces the stone cracks in the ceiling with his eyes. Silently.

He sneers. He simply can’t help it. “What’s the fucking use of you, Wilbur? You don’t know anything! All you do is ask people what’s going on, who is that, where are we, what happened?” Schlatt runs a hand through his hair. A _gray_ hand. “I mean shit, Wilbur, can’t you ever put the pieces together? Are you that fucking clueless?”

“I’m trying.”

“Ha!” Schlatt takes the whole of Wilbur in. A pale, skinny shell of a human, still kicking in the spectral plane. Still slumped in his seat, still staring at the ceiling. He looks as dead as he is. “You’re trying. How’s that going for you?”

“I’m trying,” he says again.

Schlatt stands up. “Well, good luck with that. I’m going to bed.”

_(He doesn’t sleep at night. But he slips away from reality a little, and that’s enough right now. He doesn’t want to think about faith, or punishment, or Job, or Wilbur. He doesn’t want to think about any of it.)_

“Goodnight,” Wilbur says to the ceiling.

Schlatt slams the door on his way out, and the hinges rattle.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


He wakes—or more accurately, comes back to reality—in the bed Wilbur made for him.

He is alone.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Schlatt needs to talk to someone. He needs to know what he missed—things like what happened after he died, what happened to Wilbur, and why there’s a big-ass hole where L’Manburg used to be.

Philza, then, is the most convenient choice.

He doesn’t know too much about Phil. He’s strong but aloof, kind but strict, patient but brutal when he wants to be. A kind of surrogate father for everyone running around starting wars like it’s a game. He seems the most distant from everything—not around during the election, or the festival, or any of Schlatt’s little reign of terror. And despite being Wilbur’s father, he doesn’t seem overly upset about the whole “being dead” thing.

Schlatt finds him in the deep woods, in the vicinity of where he knows Technoblade lives. He hasn’t seen the Blood God since before his death and has no desire to meet him again any time soon, so he’s going to keep this thing with Phil short and sweet.

The question he asks is the most important one. The one Wilbur (and everyone else, which is really just Quackity, who keeps shrieking in Spanish before telling him to go back to hell) keeps dodging.

“What happened after I died?”

Phil looks at him, the horns in his hair and the gray of his skin, and he sighs. “I know you’re trying to find a neutral party, Schlatt, but I’m still not the right one to ask. You were dead by the time I arrived.”

Schlatt huffs. He can’t help it. He’s frustrated. “No one seems to be able to give me a clear answer here. Wilbur doesn’t know what’s going on half the time, the rest of the party refuses to give me five seconds, and the one guy I ask showed up late.”

Phil crosses his arms and leans against the tree bark, a paragon of paternal patience. “Mhm.”

He drops, all at once, his quick anger snuffed out. Maybe that’s a good analogy, because he feels burnt out. Like a candle, wax pooling down the sides until the fire reaches the bottom of the wick and dies. Killed by its own hunger. Maybe that’s a good analogy for Schlatt. Maybe that’s why his fingertips feel like smoke sometimes, the line blurred between skin and sky. Maybe it’s just a ghost thing.

“Well,” Phil says, drawing his attention back, “I can’t tell you about your death, but I can tell you how Wil’s went down. He remembers it, but the memory is flaky. And he doesn’t know the full story.”

“Lay it on me.”

A breeze drifts through the trees. Phil bites into a piece of bread from his pocket, taking the time to put his words together. When he swallows, he looks a little more ready to talk.

“Did you know about the TNT under L’Manburg?”

Schlatt nods. “I did. I had it removed, about two weeks before the war.”

Phil’s eyes widen at that. “I guess Wil put it back, then. He must have added to it. I didn’t know that wasn’t his first... huh. Okay.”

He takes a deep breath. Ghosts don’t need to breathe, so neither does Schlatt.

“Wilbur had laced the whole underground with TNT. Again, I guess. I had just come to see my kids. I’d heard enough stories about war and power and presidents. I wanted to come see what the hell they were getting up to.” Phil smiles at his own joke, and then the smile is gone.

“I saw Wil heading into a little cave behind the podium. I followed him. We talked.” He frowns at the memory. “His hands were trembling.”

Schlatt knows what happened, probably. “What happened?” he asks anyway.

Phil shakes his head. His eyes are distant. “He seemed so calm at first, explaining everything to me. The button, the writing on the walls. I didn’t realize how bad things were.” He looks down, the green-striped hat covering everything above the mouth. “Maybe I took the whole thing lighter than I should have. Maybe... Shit.”

He takes another deep breath. When he exhales, Schlatt can hear the tremble in his voice.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

He wants the answers anyway.

“Then what?”

“He blocked off the entrance behind us. We listened to violence break out again, right over our heads. Explosions. Screaming. Dream and Techno had teamed up, fighting back again. And Wilbur... Well.”

Phil gestures vaguely. “You’ve seen the crater he left behind.”

“He pushed the button,” Schlatt says, near breathless. His airway feels thin.

Ghosts don’t breathe.

Phil nods. “I think, by that point, he’d long convinced himself it had to be done. His ‘Chekhov’s gun’. He couldn’t see any other end.” He meets Schlatt’s eyes again. Blue, red-rimmed. “The explosion opened a hole in the wall. We looked out on the destruction, and they looked back in. Tommy was yelling our names in the rubble. And Wil... He really could not see another way out.”

“What did he do?”

“He threw his sword at my feet and asked me to kill him. Begged me. _Pleaded_ with me. He simply didn’t want to go on living. He couldn’t... I don’t think he knew how to exist anymore. He died with his L’Manburg.”

Phil turns his eyes away. “So I killed him. And I held him as he died.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The wind blows through the leaves over Phil’s head, through his blond hair, through Schlatt’s brown curls. The canopy rustles so loud, it nearly matches the volume of his thoughts.

“After that, Techno built a pair of withers, unleashed them on the remains. I helped take them down. And once that was done, Tubbo wrapped himself in bandages, gathered his new cabinet, and got to work on rebuilding. Literally, the next day. He’s a good kid. Strong work ethic.”

Schlatt remembers Tubbo’s work ethic. The kid built his own funeral, for God’s sake. Or he would have, anyway, if Techno’s blow had been fatal like it was supposed to be.

Phil smiles weakly. “And now we’re here.”

“I gotta go,” Schlatt says.

“My door is always open, Schlatt. There’s a space here for you if you ever need it.”

“Bye, Phil,” Schlatt says.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


When he walks into Wilbur’s little underground residence, he stops in the doorway.

He stops, because he nearly walks into Fundy, who is leaving. There’s a bite mark out of the golden apple in his hand. Wilbur leans against the back wall over his shoulder, the last edges of a warm smile still dripping off his face like candle wax and leaving a blank canvas behind. The fire, snuffed out.

Fundy growls. “Speak of the devil. What are you doing here, Schlatt?”

“I live here now,” Schlatt says. He tucks his hands into his pockets.

The fox laughs, bitter and sardonic. His teeth are bared and bone white. “You don’t _live_ anywhere, man. What, did you forget you were dead already, you senile bastard?”

Schlatt narrows his eyes.

This fox. This _goddamn_ fox. His favorite traitor.

The cause of his death, if you think about it, and Schlatt is thinking about it.

Oh, yeah. He’s gonna tear this kid to _pieces_ , canines or not. He doesn’t need them. There’s a hundred sharp words lined up behind each other on his silver tongue already. His mouth opens, ready to bite back harder, meaner, _better_ —

Wilbur straightens up behind Fundy. Takes a step forward. His eyes are dangerously empty.

They say everything Schlatt needs to know.

He pulls back.

“No, I guess I don’t live anywhere. But Wilbur’s got room and an unlocked door, so here I am.” His gaze flicks up. “If you have a problem with it, talk it over with your old man.”

Fundy’s eyes go wide for a moment. But then it’s gone, and he snarls. “If you hurt him—”

“I’m not gonna hurt him, Fundy, relax. As you’ve mentioned, we’re both _dead_. What’s the worst I could do?”

Fundy looks at him pointedly, and for a second, he reminds him so much of Wilbur that it’s scary. “You could do a lot, actually,” he says. “So watch it.”

And then he walks through Schlatt’s body on the way out.

 _Through_ his body.

It feels like a sucker punch to the gut, leaving him short on air and swaying and suffocating, except he doesn’t need to breathe anyway so there’s just an empty space missing _inside_ of him now. His vision goes static around the edges, and he drops to his knees.

There’s a soft hand on his shoulder, soft words in his ear, but he can’t focus on it. He inhales and exhales desperately, but there’s nothing coming in, nothing coming out. He doesn’t actually have lungs to hold the air. No, it’s like Fundy said, he’s just dead, he’s fucking dead, and someone just walked through his body, walked through whatever’s left of him and opened up a vacuum. He feels like he’s dissolving. He feels like the fire, extinguished. It’s too soon. He can’t breathe— he can’t _see_ — he _can’t_ —

“ _Schlatt._ ”

His head jerks up, and Wilbur is there, hands gentle on either side of his face. “I’m gonna help you calm down, okay? Just... I know we don’t breathe, but go through the motions. Bear with me. Breathe with me. Slowly.”

Wilbur loudly sucks in. “Inhale.”

_(—There’s a big empty hole inside of him and it’s not filling back up, there’s nothing left to fill it—)_

He blows out. “Exhale.”

_(—There’s an empty hole where his lungs should be, where they used to be—)_

“Inhale.”

_(—An empty hole where his heart should be—)_

“Exhale. Good.”

_(—He’s just a soul now, with pieces missing, floating around, stupid, hated, utterly fucking useless—)_

“Schlatt. Stay with me, please. Inhale.”

_(—He is the candle, burning, melting, inhaling, exhaling, he’s not alone—)_

“Exhale.”

_(—He’s not alone. He’s not alone.)_

The static clears away. His gray hands stop shaking. He focuses on Wilbur, who smiles. Wilbur, gray as the clouds and yellow as the sun. “You alright?”

“Better,” Schlatt says. “Thanks.”

“It’s okay.”

It’s okay.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Schlatt is halfway through _Heart of a Dog_.

“I’m sorry.”

Wilbur is staring down at blank pages.

“I forgive you.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Schlatt jerks back into reality in his bed out of something like a nightmare. He knows it wasn’t a nightmare, though. Too vivid, too familiar to be just a nightmare. It feels more like a memory, buried in his cerebral cortex.

Ghosts can’t dream, anyway.

He’s sitting straight up in his sheets. Only one lantern is still lit, dim and flickering, holding the darkness at bay. The candle inside is burning out, fire eating its way down the wick, eating through his memories until—

“Hey.”

He jumps. Wilbur rubs his ghostly gray eyes and looks up at him, propping his elbow on the pillow. “Are you okay?”

Schlatt laughs through a grimace. “No.”

Wilbur squints at him. Schlatt squints back. The candle in the lantern burns on.

After minutes of a staring contest that’s going nowhere because neither party actually needs to blink, Wilbur lets out a dramatic sigh and flips his own covers back. “Let’s not be alone, then,” he says. “Come sleep with me.”

“Don’t be fucking gay, Wilbur,” Schlatt chuckles, and climbs underneath the blankets.

“ _Next_ to me, then. You know what I mean.”

“I know.”

The lantern burns out, plunging the room into blackness.

Schlatt finds Wilbur’s hand somewhere in the sheets and squeezes it. Wilbur squeezes back.

He slips back into his memories.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


When the sun begins to set, Wilbur leads him to a bench overlooking L’Manburg and the Dreamland. He can see enormous buildings, long wooden pathways, and miles of thick forest beyond. Overhead, the atmosphere looks like a watercolor painting—the sunset wash, all blood-reds and blush-pinks.

“Tommy and Tubbo come here a lot,” Wilbur says. “Or they used to. I don’t know if they still do. I hope they do.” He pauses. “Either way, the view is beautiful.”

Schlatt hums. “It is nice. I probably should have admired it more when I was alive and all.”

Wilbur glances over. “What did you do instead?”

“Oh, boring shit. I tore down buildings, built new ones, expanded the borders. Lifted weights. Drank a lot of protein shakes.” He laughs, and it comes out self-deprecating. “Lotta good that did in the end, huh?”

“What, the expansions or the exercise?”

“All of it.” He sweeps a hand across the horizon, across the clouds that wisp across the sky like ocean waves. “You don’t think about this stuff when you’re alive. You think every sunset’s the same— you’ll always have time to see another sunset, you know? But it doesn’t work like that.”

Wilbur leans back in the wooden seat. “I used to like the sunsets. I remember that—watching the sunsets on top of the walls, with my friends. We were so high up, atop those walls. It felt like we could reach the clouds if we tried.” He smiles. “That’s a happy memory.”

Schlatt frowns at him. “Is that really all you remember? The happy memories?”

“Pretty much,” he says. “Happy memories, and a lot of blank space in between. A lot of bad memories that didn’t quite stick, I guess. Some are from my childhood, some from L’Manburg.”

“You remember your death, though, right? You remember Phil...”

He meets Schlatt’s gaze, steady. “I do.”

Schlatt pointedly does not think about the implications of that.

“It sounds like you had a lot of bad memories too,” Wilbur continues, “but you kept them. I wonder why.”

“Guess I’m just built different.”

Wilbur laughs at that, _genuinely_ laughs, his head tilted back. When he turns back to Schlatt, hair falling over his eyes, there’s a pink glow dusted onto his cheekbones. The sun bathes him in its dying light, softening his hard lines into fuzzy curves. He looks alive again.

“We should have done this together, before we died,” he says. His smile is radiant.

“How do you know we didn’t?”

And yet— a sadness lingers in the corners of his lips, even if he doesn’t know it.

“I would have remembered.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Schlatt has nearly reached the three-quarters checkpoint in _Heart of a Dog_ when he finally asks Wilbur what’s up with the book, and the pen, and the blank pages.

“I’m writing down everything I remember. Anything, really.” He smiles, sheepish. “It’s not much so far, but... If I start to lose time again, maybe this will help me get it back.”

_(“I’m trying,” Wilbur had said, with empty pages open on his lap.)_

“How much you got so far?” Schlatt asks, trying to ignore the guilt swelling up in his throat.

“A few pages. Lots of little things, like smells and feelings and people. I don’t know— I feel like I could forget anything at any time, so whatever shows up in my brain... Into the book it goes.”

Schlatt holds a hand out, and after a moment of hesitation, Wilbur passes the book to him.

He skims the pages, nodding. “Not too bad.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you’re making good progress.”

Schlatt is lying.

It’s sobering, even if he won’t say so out loud, to see how little of his life he remembers. He doesn’t seem to remember anything about Schlatt or the old days, either. Only scraps from childhood and the wars, like obscure middle pieces in an enormous puzzle.

He can’t help the thought that slips out.

“Did I do this to you?”

Wilbur narrows his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Schlatt hands the journal back, and Wilbur pulls his long legs up into the chair, cradling the book to his chest. “I mean... I was only supposed to show up as a political endorsement. An old friend on your side, ready to back the POG2020 Campaign.” He shrugs. “Instead, I took over. All the way.”

“I wouldn’t say it was entirely your fault.”

“A lot of people would disagree with you there.”

“Well,” Wilbur says, “They keep saying you took over like some kind of coup. But I know we held an election, and Technoblade says you took your position fairly, and I believe him. That was okay.”

“That part was fine. It’s what came after. The exiling—”

Wilbur shakes his head, shrinks down in his chair. “I don’t want to remember that right now,” he says.

Schlatt can practically feel his hackles rising. “You don’t _want_ to remember? I thought that was the whole point of your little journal there. Am I wrong?”

“It hurts.”

He scoffs. “Truth hurts, sweetheart. Get used to it.”

Wilbur drops his pen.

When Schlatt looks up, his eyes are entirely white static. His body goes blurry around the edges, fuzzy and fading like smoke clouds. Like the candle, extinguished.

About three seconds before Schlatt spirals into a full panic, it’s over. The lines sharpen, his eyes clear up. And Wilbur—

Wilbur is _giggling_.

“What the fuck,” Schlatt says. “Wilbur.”

The giggling devolves into full-blown laughter, echoing off the stone around them. Schlatt is standing there like an idiot, hands still raised in residual anxiety. “Wilbur. Hey. Wil. _Wilbur!_ Jesus Christ! What the hell just happened?”

Wilbur meets his eyes and instantly spirals into laughter again. He wipes ghostly tears from his eyes.

“You made me”—he can barely get the words out between giggles—“sing _Soulja Boy_.”

Of all the fucking memories.

“Oh my God,” Schlatt says. He _does_ know this one. “Blame Connor for that. I had no involvement with the singing thing! That was his plan!”

“You wanted to _elope_.”

“It was a bit! It was funny, you laughed, we all laughed! Goddammit,” Schlatt groans. “Did you just remember this because I called you ‘sweetheart’?”

Wilbur will _not stop laughing_.

“I was right. This is all my fault. It’s— okay, Jesus, Wilbur, at least _pretend_ to breathe, you’re freaking me out here.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


When the last fire dies out that night, Wilbur speaks again.

“We really did know each other, then. Before all this. We were friends.”

Schlatt turns his head. He can barely see Wilbur’s ghostly outline in the darkness. “Yeah.”

“Did you miss it?”

 _Did_ you miss it, he says. _When you were alive_ , then, goes unsaid.

“Sometimes. I missed you, and Connor, and everyone else we used to live with. I missed the fun of it all, and the chaos. The freedom.”

“It sounds nice,” Wilbur whispers. “I hope I remember more of us. I’d like us to be friends like that again.”

Schlatt smiles. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact no.1 - _Heart of a Dog_ is a book that schlatt has actually read in real life—an obscure tidbit i saw him mention on twitter, if you remember his russian phase back in april. i read the plot summary for you: basically, a freaky satire on bolshevism and an allegory for the communist revolution. it sounds very fascinating and very schlatt.
> 
> fun fact no.2 - the "sweetheart" bit is a genuine reference to wilbur's smplive reunion stream in june. you can find the vod on youtube, so if you didn't see it live like us cool kids, i highly recommend it. it's a good time.
> 
> fun fact no.3 - i read the sparknotes for the book of job. please don't come at me for any inaccuracies.
> 
> the title is from Job 5:18. you can read the passage [here](https://biblehub.com/esv/job/5.htm).


End file.
